President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states.
Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands.
Since the shutdown started on Wednesday, the Trump administration has canceled or delayed federal aid to 16 states, most of them run by Democrats. In the latest example, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said on Friday that the administration would halt about $2.1 billion in approved funding for long-planned transit improvements in Chicago.
Mr. Vought claimed the pause was necessary to ensure that the city, which is led by a Democratic mayor in a state with a Democratic governor, had not engaged in “race-based contracting.”
The White House has also targeted New York, the home state of Democrats’ congressional leaders, and canceled nearly $7.6 billion in federal green-energy funding, predominantly in Democratic-led states. On Friday, the Trump administration said it could look to slash unspecified aid to Portland soon, after earlier stripping away some of Oregon’s infrastructure money.
“Without a doubt, blue states are on the front lines of the attacks,” said New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. “They’re coming after us.”
Throughout the week, the president’s deputies maintained that they were not politicizing the shutdown and that they sought only to save money and prevent waste. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday that the administration had to conduct “a massive review of the bureaucracy to be good stewards of the American taxpayer dollar” during the shutdown.
But Mr. Trump has undercut his aides at every turn. He has suggested that he may try to enact permanent cuts on “Democrat agencies,” potentially through mass layoffs, and on social media on Friday he shared a parody video that referred to Mr. Vought as the Democrats’ “reaper.”
Budget experts said they could not recall a time when a president had weaponized funding in this manner during a shutdown, even when Mr. Trump occupied the White House during the longest closure in U.S. history — a five-week interruption in late 2018 and early 2019.
Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University who studies federal spending, said the tactics evinced Mr. Trump’s belief that he possessed vast “unilateral” power over the budget, which he could use to “coerce states, institutions and individuals,” while controlling the narrative on the shutdown.
“I can’t think of a historical parallel of an administration publicly cutting funds in a shutdown like this,” Mr. Lawrence said.
The funding cuts are a stark escalation in Mr. Trump’s campaign to cut federal spending and reconfigure the budget in service of his political priorities. Since returning to office, the president has closed agencies and programs while halting or canceling billions of dollars in enacted funds, acting out of a belief that he can override lawmakers to achieve his agenda.
Mr. Trump has attacked funding for science and research, public education, public broadcasting, green energy, transportation infrastructure, disaster response, federal oversight and foreign aid. He has often blocked this money because he believes it was being spent wastefully or fraudulently, or because it did not conform to his views on policies like immigration.
States and other recipients have filed dozens of lawsuits to force the release of federal aid, claiming that the president has broken the law by withholding congressionally approved funds. A federal court ordered the Trump administration this week to restore $187 million in counterterrorism funding to New York, which the federal government had stripped without explanation.
But Mr. Trump has remained undeterred by legal threats and unconstrained by Republicans in Congress. He and Mr. Vought, an architect of the conservative Project 2025 blueprint, have instead seized on the moment to test the limits of their powers.
“We have the authority to make permanent change in the bureaucracy here in government,” Mr. Vought told Fox Business on the eve of the shutdown.
Hours into the shutdown, Mr. Vought began by taking aim at New York City. He wrote on social media that the administration would halt $18 billion in infrastructure funding “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,” using the initials for diversity, equity and inclusion.
The money interrupted two big projects: the Hudson Tunnel Project, meant to improve transit under the river between New York City and New Jersey, and the Second Avenue subway on the east side of Manhattan. The Transportation Department said it could not complete a review of money “thanks” to Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the two New Yorkers who lead the Democrats in Congress.
Ms. Hochul said her state had spent “decades of waiting and waiting and waiting” for the money. “We are definitely being punished, not just for being a blue state but for being the home of the leaders,” she said.
The next day, Mr. Vought took aim at almost $7.6 billion in clean energy funding for 223 projects across 16 states, including California, Illinois and New York. He called the money “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business on Friday that the government was blocking the money, for now, because it was “punishing the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.”
The Department of Energy considered more extensive cuts, totaling about $20 billion in a broader roster of states led by both parties, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe private budget records. The administration chose to slash funds in 16 states, for now, many of them led by Democrats.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment about its funding cuts and delays. The Department of Energy also did not respond to a request for comment.
“It seems that most of these grants are in either blue states or areas that Kamala Harris won. It feels very political,” said Representative Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon. “It feels very political.”
Ms. Bonamici’s district west of Portland had expected to benefit from some of the canceled green-energy infrastructure funding, which would have helped improve the region’s energy grid. “They are funds that Congress already authorized,” she added.
In the opening days of the shutdown, Republicans rallied behind the White House, arguing that Democrats were to blame because they did not accept the president’s demands and support a short-term measure to fund the government into November. Democrats had opposed the approach because it would not have extended expiring subsidies that help millions afford health insurance.
“What they have to do is make very difficult decisions,” Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said of the White House this week. He said Mr. Vought “takes no pleasure in this.”
Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, an open-government group, said Americans should be “skeptical of stated reasons” for Mr. Trump’s spending decisions, given the “multiple” other instances in which he has interfered with congressionally enacted funding.
Ms. Lindgrensavage’s organization sued Mr. Vought in April after the White House budget office disabled a database required by law to track the flow of enacted funds. In July, a judge forced the White House to release those budget logs, which showed that the Trump administration appeared to limit the release of funds to some agencies until they agreed to spend in line with the president’s priorities.
Before the database was restored, the Government Accountability Office had raised alarms about its ability to conduct oversight of the administration. That office has determined that Mr. Trump and his aides repeatedly violated a 1970s law that prohibits presidents from withholding money enacted by Congress. The tactic, known as impoundment, has held up money meant to upgrade school buses, fund libraries and respond to natural disasters, the office’s investigations have found.
Mr. Trump’s top aides have rejected those findings, sought to discredit the congressional office and challenged the anti-impoundment law as unconstitutional. The Government Accountability Office has retained legal counsel in preparation for a potentially landmark lawsuit against the White House, according to documents previously viewed by The New York Times.
Edda Perez, the office’s general counsel, said it had not decided whether to sue.